In recent years, a two-dimensional barcode has been widely used in varieties of applications. For example, in the advertising and marketing, the two-dimensional barcode is adopted to store a coupon link website, in a personal business card, the two-dimensional barcode is adopted to store an e-mail address or twitter/facebook link, in merchandise, the two-dimensional barcode is adopted to store introduction web pages of the merchandise, and in a ticketing system, the two-dimensional barcode is adopted to store a single ticket. Most of the above applications are restricted by the capacity of the two-dimensional barcode, and only single website link or single ticket can be stored. The phenomenon results in that the two-dimensional barcode cannot exist independently, an additional auxiliary media is needed to explain content of the two-dimensional barcode, for example, in the advertising and marketing, a text is required to explain that the two-dimensional barcode is used to download the coupon, and the ticket needs to have an additional information text to indicate which activity the ticket is used for. Thus, larger storage space is needed, for example: information about personal biological characteristics, and fingerprints and iris features; storing multiple types of information in a single barcode, for example: a barcode on a business card stores an e-mail address, a telephone number, twitter/face book, and address information at the same time; and a security mechanism is added to the content of the barcode, for example: an authentication mechanism is added to a ticket, a password needs to be input to learn activity information corresponding to the ticket, and even if lost, the stolen ticket cannot be used by others. Many other applications are restricted by the capacity problem and thus cannot be implemented.
As a camera carried in a smart phone is highly developed, the two-dimensional barcode also evolves to a color age. Adding color information highly increases the capacity of the barcode, so that the applications of the barcode can be more diversified.